


O Come All Ye Faithful

by Britpacker



Series: Seasons Of Goodwill [3]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, Family, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 23:43:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas with the in-laws.  Malcolm’s never seen anything like it. And why is Jonathan hiding behind the sofa?</p>
            </blockquote>





	O Come All Ye Faithful

**Author's Note:**

> Henceforward this series goes off into a happy non-canon universe where "Those Were The Voyages" never happened. Malcolm's family doesn't seem to have been the warmest, so it's about time he discovered what a proper Christmas is like.

“Do y’ like it, Uncle Trip?” A pudgy hand tugged the sleeve of his snowman sweater, two pairs of bright aqua eyes fixed eagerly on his puzzled face. “It’s a cupcake maker.”

“Well, that’s wonderful, Izzy – me an’ Uncle Malcolm haven’t got one of them, have we, Mal?” Helplessly Trip Tucker lifted his pink plastic trophy in the direction of his stricken spouse as both five-year-old twin nieces shrieked and giggled their delight. And to think he’d confidently predicted the end of useless Christmas gifts the day they’d left Enterprise with her annual Johnny-inspired gift grabs!

“I’m sure we’ll get it working inside a year, love.” For Trip there was a subtle eye-roll; for the girls’ hovering mother a kindly smile. “Do you make cupcakes at home, Beth?”

“Momma’s real good at them, but she don’t use a machine like that.” Younger by five minutes than Isabelle, Elizabeth Robbins was a Tucker in manner as much as looks; bouncing, boisterous and quite incapable, as she rubbed her chocolaty paw against his knee, of keeping her hands to herself. 

To his utter amazement, Malcolm Reed adored her. 

Children, he mused, possessed the same sixth sense as beagles: an innate ability to recognise who liked them and who did not, even when the person who liked them had absolutely no idea how to react to their astonishingly unconnected observations. 

“Your Momma doesn’t need a machine because unlike Uncle Trip, she can cook.” From the opposite corner of the large open-plan lounge/dining room the former captain of the Enterprise favoured his former tactical officer with a kindly smile. “Susie, you’ll have to cook up some chocolate fudge for Malcolm to try sometime soon. I happen to know he has a secret sweet tooth.”

“Not so secret now, Jonathan,” Reed returned mildly, conscious of Trip turning away to hide a smile at his still-hesitant use of an admiral’s given name. Little Robbie Tucker, youngest of the children spreading toys, paper and food crumbs across the hardwood floor of their grandparents’ home, gave vent to a yelp of delight. 

“Auntie Sue’s doin’ fudge!” 

“Not on Christmas day she ain’t,” the lady herself shot back as she deftly scooped her elder child from the path of her cousin Tommy Jones, swooping by on his new Starfleet-sanctioned battery shuttlepod. “Becky, will you get a grip of that boy before he knocks somebody over with that thing?”

“Blame Trip – he bought it!”

“Hey, the kid’s happy!” Indignant, the eldest son of the family abandoned the half-unwrapped box he’d been attacking with a schoolboy’s eagerness. “And how much tape did you use on this thing, Rebecca Marie Jones? I need my best laser cutter to get into it!”

“Oh, give it here, you great wuss.” Before the second Tucker sister could explode into voluble protest Malcolm eased the box from his neighbour’s knees to his own, sliding a thumbnail beneath the jagged end of tape already loosened. With a satisfying rip the whole thing came away and he presented the half-open parcel to his husband with a guileless smile. “Think you can manage now, dear?”

“Whose side are you s’posed to be on, anyway?” Trip grumbled while his nearest relations laughed. Small, plump and pretty Leanne, the Tucker matriarch, tossed a squidy package over his head, landing it neatly on her new son-in-law’s lap. 

“Now if you don’t like it, you don’t be polite an’ pretend, Malcolm – not in this house,” she admonished, his answering blush enough to divert some of the teasing attention from her son. “Charlie! Door!”

“I’m tryin’ to ignore it.” Charles Tucker II, a broader, more crease-browed version of both his sons, grimaced theatrically. “Johnny, you might wanna move. Josephine asks every time she calls how you’re doin’ and if you’re _attached_ yet.”

The warning succeeded where threats by Romulan, Suliban and Xindi combined had spectacularly failed. The dauntless Captain of the Enterprise hid behind his chair.

Three minutes later the ship’s former Chief Tactical Officer was silently applauding the man’s strategic nous. Trip’s divorced aunt had subjected the astonished Englishman to the ocular equivalent of a strip-search while shaking his hand, pausing only long enough to loudly bemoan the non-Tucker standard colour of his hair.

“I don’t know what it is about our family but we always do better marryin’ other blonds – isn’t that right, Charlie?” she bellowed, air-kissing her golden-haired sister-in-law. “And better stayin’ blond, too. Leanne, tell Janie - she looks like second-rate drag queen that colour!”

“At least I’m dressed t’ suit my age, not my shoe size.” Half her sister’s size and looking, even her favourite nephew would concede, twice her age, Janie Tucker pulled the family’s newest member into a floral-scented hug. “And ignore Jo, Malcolm, it’s a real pleasure to finally meet you. Charlie and Leanne have told us so much about you!”

“I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not, Miss Tucker, but the feeling’s mutual,” he said sedately. Both aunts positively gurgled with delight.

“Oh, that _accent_!” Jo exclaimed, theatrically fanning her immaculately made-up face. Janie frowned.

“Now Jo, don’t embarrass Malcolm, he can’t help soundin’ so darn sexy.” 

“Aw Janie, you’ve made ‘im blush – and let’s have none of this _Miz Tucker_ or _Mrs Norton_ , alright? We’re Aunt Jo an’ Aunt Janie in this house – isn’t that right, Jon?”

“Always has been, Aunt Jo.” Only those who knew him best would identify the cringing hesitation with which Archer presented himself to be not-so-discreetly felt up. “But if Malcolm forgets, be patient. He still tries to call me Admiral sometimes, doesn’t he, Trip?”

“When I remember you’ve been promoted from captain – Sir.” The sally won gales of unmerited laughter during which Malcolm seized the chance to slide back into the crook of Trip’s arm. “Can I get you drinks, ladies?”

“Oh, my!” Dropping Jonathan like a hot potato, Aunt Jo turned to flutter her elongated lashes his way. “Good-lookin’ _and_ charmin’, it’s obvious what Trip sees in you, Malcolm! You know babe, I was beginnin’ to wonder if you’d ever jus’ come out an’ _admit_ to bein’ gay . It ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of in this day an’ age, and yet there you were, pretendin’ to chase after girls every time I saw y’…”

“I wasn’t pretendin’,” Trip objected loudly. From either side warning hands curled around his biceps.

“Perhaps we could discuss semantics another time?” his husband suggested mildly as his mother tsked, shepherding her little flock fully into the open-plan lounge. Trip linked their fingers, gently tugging the smaller man down onto a wing-chair at his side. “Robbie, what’s that you’ve got?”

“Spacedock!” The baby of the family brandished a construction of oversized plastic bricks over his unruly blond head. “Poppy, help!”

“Sure thing, Rob.” Eagerly Chris Tucker scooted across the floor to squat beside his son, holding the structure steady while Robbie attached random bricks at odd angles. The three-year-old’s mother speared a warning look her brother-in-law’s way.

“And if you tell him no starship’d be able to dock there, Trip Tucker, I’ll be servin’ up your tongue as a garnish for the turkey,” she muttered, the mirth in her dark eyes at odds with the menacing tone. Trip made a show of dodging behind his smaller neighbour.

“Got the most dangerous man in Starfleet right here, Nic, remember that,” he drawled, his words overlaid by a sudden wail from the corner of the room. “Hey Susie, that one of yours?”

“Sounds like the both of 'em.” Susie Robbins swooped between her twin daughters, somehow emerging with the small electronic puppy they’d been using as a tug-‘o’-war rope. “Dammit, you’ll break it before the day’s out! Isabelle, this one’s Elizabeth’s – go find your own doggie!”

A second howl joined the first, and a small hand lashed out, pudgy fingers coming back with a fine coat of golden-brown hairs. “I hate you!”

“Hate you more! Mommy, it’s not fair!”

Within seconds a full-fledged battle had broken out, with half a dozen adult voices loudly rolling across the combat zone. 

“Dammit Sue, get a grip on those girls, they’re upsettin’ Robbie!”

“Tommy, Jack, get back here and leave your cousins to fight if they wanna! Dad, you mind passin’ another glass of punch my way?”

“My house is not a boxin’ ring! You girls put a stop to this right now! Susan Tucker Robbins, gimme those damn puppies an’ I’ll tear their yappin’ plastic heads off!”

“Aw Dad, what d’you go say _that_ for?” Susie bellowed, her penetrating contralto soaring above the deep bass note of Charlie Tucker’s threat. Both girls stopped smacking each other just long enough to break into storms of noisy tears.

Trip gave the hyper-tense form at his side a reassuring squeeze that unfroze Malcolm’s petrified limbs, enabling him to rocket off the seat and through the crashing waves of noise and animosity. “You mum might need a hand,” he muttered, vaguely conscious of a warming sensation at his back identifiable as Trip scrambling up in his wake, firing apologies off left and right to the relations he bumped in the rush to catch up with his fleeing spouse.

“Hey, Malcolm.” Serenely stirring her bubbling gravy the mistress of the house gave him a sunny smile. “Sounds like trouble’s brewin’ in there. The girls again? Kettle’s just boiled if you’d like coffee.”

“I, er, thank you, yes, would you like one?” The din was muted by heavy wooden doors, but what calmed his nerves most, Reed suspected, was the aura of effortless control that surrounded his mother-in-law. “I’m afraid I’m not really used to all that racket.”

“Didn’t you an’ Maddie fight over your toys?” Trip’s arms looped around him from the rear, subtly pulling him back into a cosseting embrace. Malcolm tilted his head, peeking up at the taller man.

“Certainly not! The first raised voice and we’d both have been marched to our rooms without pudding. I didn’t mean to bolt, but…”

“You should’ve seen Christmas when my kids were small.” Pushing the fringe back from her forehead, Mrs Tucker let her spoon still for a moment, a sweet, reminiscent smile crossing her rosy face. “Lizzie always wantin’ everythin’ the bigger girls got; Chris gettin’ under Trip’s feet ‘cause he wanted whatever whizz-bang buildin’ set Charlie’d insisted we buy… the fights I had to break up you wouldn’t believe, and that was without Jo’s ex-husband drinkin’ all Grandpa Tucker’s moonshine then tryin’ to feel up poor Janie when his wife wasn’t lookin’. Guess it was all a little more sedate in your house.”

“Much more.” To his own surprise there was a wistful note in Malcolm’s voice. “I’m sorry – seeing the girls trying to scratch each other’s eyes out like that… they’re such sweet things.”

“Not often enough, they’re not.” Giving her brother a peck in passing Susie swept into the kitchen with a frayed red leather puppy lead dangling from her hands. “Mom, you got any cookies for me to calm the kids down with ‘til dinner’s ready? Trip, you and Malcolm might wanna rescue Johnny before he starts howlin’ too. Aunt Jo’s got him backed up in a corner bein’ told how _handsome_ he looks in his official Starfleet portrait, and you know he’s been hearin’ that line for the last fifteen years.”

“You up to a lil’ heroic rescuin’, Mister Reed?” Trip nuzzled the side of his neck and heedless of their amused audience Malcolm tilted his head to offer greater access. “Maybe Johnny can help us get our gifts to the annexe before dinner? Soon as they see their Granny’s Christmas cookies the kids’ll forget all about fightin’. “

His lover, he could see, was unconvinced but too well-bred to argue. “Say, Johnny? You gonna help Mal an’ me make some space in time for dinner?” he hollered, unsurprised by the speed with which his old friend responded. 

By the time the turkey had taken pride of place on the big dinner table and everyone had been placed in their proper seats, Beth and Izzy were best friends and Malcolm’s frazzled nerves had been calmed. All in all, Trip congratulated himself, a pretty standard Christmas Day with the Tuckers.

*

It got even more standard when Aunt Jo decided to criticise her hostess’s cooking, alcohol thickening her accent. “Y’ oughta let me bring the stuffin’, Leanne. Nothin’ beats the Tucker family recipe; you liked it that Thanksgiving Lee was ill and ah stepped in, didn’t ya, Jon?”

The admiral coughed. “It’s something in the Southern blood, I guess; you’re all great cooks.”

“Do you remember the last time Trip invited you to dinner, Jonathan?”

“Okay, the women are all good cooks,” Archer corrected as the table erupted into laughter. Jo Norton frowned. 

“It’s no problem for me to make a batch of stuffin’ before ah leave home, Charlie; give Leanne time to get the turkey cooked right.”

“If you’re not happy with my wife’s cookin', go spend Christmas with Teddy an’ Monica,” her brother invited, brandishing the carving knife with ominous intent. Aunt Jo glared at him.

“You’re head of this family, Charlie, and it’s only right we come to you,” she simpered, adding a glare at their youngest sibling as Janie rolled her eyes. “’sides, we’ve got no kids. We like t’ see what Santa’s been bringin’ for your grandkids.”

From the farthest end of the table a disgusted treble sang out. “Ain’t no such person as Santa Claus. I thought _everybody_ knew that!”

“Tommy Jones!” Becky exclaimed.

“Mommy, Santa’s gonna come back an’ steal all our presents ‘cause Tommy said a bad thing!” her smaller son wailed, bottom lip a-tremble. Tommy pouted at him.

Suddenly Malcolm had no difficulty envisaging his husband as a stroppy little boy on Christmas morning. The family resemblance was nothing short of terrifying. 

“Don’t talk dumb, Jack. He don’t exist so he can’t steal nothin’,” Tommy yelped, turning on instinct to the sensible grown-up most likely to support him. “It’s true, Uncle Malcolm, ain’t it? There ain’t really no Santa livin’ at the North Pole!”

All eyes turned to him, but for once under frank scrutiny Malcolm felt entirely calm. “That’s a wicked rumour spread by jealous people who don’t behave well enough through the year for Santa to visit, Tommy,” he stated with all the stern authority of the planet’s finest Tactical Officer. On his left, the boy’s mother sagged visibly with relief. 

“And if you keep sayin’ things like that to your little brother an’ cousins, he won’t be comin’ to you next year,” she rasped, accepting a refill of wine from Trip facing them with a gratified smile. “Dinner’s great by the way, Mom. Nicole, you mind passin’ me the cranberry sauce?”

As the sauce boat came their way, she leaned into her neighbour space. “Thanks, Malcolm.”

“Glad to be of service.”

It was, he thought as she chuckled, so much more than a mere courtesy. This noisy, happy family with their clashing characters and squabbling offspring had welcomed him without reservation, understanding his uncertainty and with their own unique brand of semi-tactful kindness easing him into their life. His husband’s adorably boisterous, open enthusiasm for everything made sense now he knew exactly what had formed him.

*

“Uncle Malcolm?” Tommy slipped out of the kitchen’s shadows where he had been lingering with the obvious intention of catching the two men leaving the main house for the privacy of the small annexe reserved for their use. The Englishman smiled, a gentle tug on Trip’s fingers enough to stop the taller man in his tracks.

“You know there’s no Santa Claus really, right?” the boy asked, gnawing his lower lip. To Trip’s surprise, his husband ruffled the already-mussed blond hair.

“Of course, but you mustn’t spoil it for the little ones,” he said, crouching to the youngster’s level. Tommy frowned. 

“But they’re gonna find out like I did; some jerk at school shoutin’ in the corridor,” he argued.

“Possibly, but not until they’re old enough to understand why their parents pretended he was real. You _do_ understand that, of course?”

Watching his nephew bristle, Trip was amazed at how well his child-phobic spouse could handle a truculent junior Tucker. “Course I do. It’s kinda magic to think there’s this guy flyin’ a sleigh with reindeer who brings all the toys you’ve asked for down the chimney.”

Malcolm nodded solemnly. “So; you’ll tell Jack and the others he’s real next time they ask?”

Tommy considered for a moment: then nodded. “Guess so. Did you believe when you were a kid, Uncle Trip?”

“Hel - um, I mean heck, yeah.”

Big blue eyes searched his face for deceit, then moved on. “Uncle Malc?”

The nickname caused a start, then a sad smile. “Oh, I was never allowed to believe, Tommy. My father summoned me to his study before I started school and informed me I wasn’t to believe a word of the preposterous drivel I’d hear spouted about _Father Christmas_ , which is what he’s more often called in England. He told me – and my sister when she was the same age – that some over-indulgent, foolish parents filled their children’s bedrooms with frippery on Christmas Eve and pretended a magical old man was responsible.”

Tommy’s eyes, Trip suspected, were no wider than his at the pained recital. “Really?” the boy gasped.

“I was a Reed, and I’d grow up to be an officer.” Word for word the brutal lecture replayed through his mind and Malcolm’s usually pleasing voice hardened until it almost mimicked that of Captain Stuart Reed. “I had to face hard facts, even if my mollycoddled schoolmates chose to believe in fairytales. Don’t make Jack, Robbie and the girls do that, Tom.”

“I – I won’t.” Impulsively the lad reached up and hugged him, Trip quickly releasing the hand he held so Malcolm could respond, his eyes drifting shut as he lifted Tommy’s light weight into his arms. “I better go now, ‘fore Mom comes lookin’. G’night.”

“’night.” 

They waited until the interior door was closed before unlocking the outer one and crossing a narrow path to the annexe, exhaustion hitting them simultaneously as they stumbled over their own threshold. “I love ‘em but boy, I love gettin’ away from them too,” Trip sighed as they collapsed in a mass of tangled limbs on the waiting couch. “You been okay, babe?”

“Think so, but your Auntie Jo’d scare the crap out of me if I was remotely available.” The quiet of their private space was making him light-headed as Phlox’s more potent pain-relievers and loosening his tongue the same way, Malcolm realised. “Make sure we never introduce her to my Aunt Cherie or nothing this side of Vulcan with a penis would be safe! Did you see her pawing the captain - beg pardon, _Jon_ – under the holly bough?”

“If there ain’t no mistletoe – improvise,” Trip quoted ruefully. “Momma can’t stand her, but Dad can’t turn her away. Guess families are like that.”

“Some are. My parents have never had the smallest qualm about avoiding Mum’s sisters over Christmas.” Or any other time of the year, but that wasn’t the point. 

Snuggling into his husband’s loose hold, Malcolm exhaled a satisfied sigh at odds with the tension he felt around him. “Spit it out. You’re itching to rant about Dad, aren’t you?”

“I just can’t understand how anyone could be so cruel to a little kid.” Or to Malcolm Reed, period. “That’s why you were so quick answerin’ Tommy at the table, wasn’t it? ‘Cause you didn’t want Jack, Robbie an’ the girls to lose the magic you never had.”

“More or less.” It astonished him how easily this man could read the things he hid so well from the rest of the world. “But he didn’t mean to be cruel, Trip. In his own way I think he was trying to do the best he could for us.”

Tucker snorted. “How did you get your presents, then? Handed out from under the tree, or didn’t he like them either?”

“He doesn’t especially, but Mum always dug her heels in and bought one. No, we’d come downstairs on Christmas morning and he’d hand over our gift, then Mum gave us a box of chocolates and some fruit. Now what?”

“ _Gift_?” his husband clarified. “Singular?”

“Frippery and frivolousness, remember?” Lazily he shifted, tipping back his head so he could stare straight into dangerously narrowed slits of ocean blue. “I usually got a book – picture-books of great battles when I was little, then biographies of famous sailors, books of naval tactics... and don’t pull a face: Mads got _My First Recipe Book_ when she was seven. If it didn’t relate to the family business, it didn’t belong in my bedroom.”

“Mal, I’m sorry.”

“What for?” As fingertips smoothed the furrow between his eyebrows, the Englishman relaxed into comprehension. “I rather liked them, actually; still have most of them. They meant he noticed me, you see – at least one day a year, he actually gave me something that _mattered_ to him. 

“Mind you, maybe if I’d binned them maybe he’d have understood I was serious about not going to sea. He hasn’t sent me a book since my first Christmas at the Academy. That’s when I realised he was serious about the whole disavowal business. You know we haven’t spoken since I signed up.”

And that however much he denied it, the breach still hurt. Trip tightened his grip and pulled up his long legs, laying himself flat on the couch with his husband sprawled over him. “And then I went an’ gave you a goddamn model ship for a Christmas present,” he groaned, burning face buried in the younger man’s sable hair. “Jesus, Malcolm, I’m surprised you didn’t stick it up my ass mast first! If I’d known...”

Moist, malleable lips worked up the cording of his neck, a tongue flicking against the slight growth of stubble over his chin. “You couldn’t have given me anything more perfect than my little Billy Ruff’an, Trip,” Malcolm told him earnestly, working his way upward until he could lick the upturned tip of his husband’s nose before pressing his own against it as he gazed into those drownable eyes. “Dad’s gifts were another attempt to mould me into his ideal: you spent weeks crafting something because you knew it’d mean something to the man I am. It – it said something profound about your feelings, something I’d never have dared to hope for. It said you loved me, and none of those dusty old analyses of Trafalgar ever really did that.”

Relief flooded the handsome face an inch below his and bringing up his hands to cup it Malcolm treated is spouse to a lingering, increasingly passionate kiss. “Oh, I love you alright, Mister Reed,” Trip promised when they parted, both dazed and panting. “Come to bed?”

With the lazy grace of a cat Malcolm stood with both hands extended, heat rising in his half-lidded eyes. “That sounds,” he murmured, “like the perfect end to a perfect Christmas Day!”


End file.
